Scoreboard Media Group, Internet Audience Development

Who wants to be an SEO Billionaire?  If you didn’t raise your hand, please leave.  I can see you.  Yah, you.  The guy looking over both his shoulders right now wondering if I can really see you.  I can.  I’m serious.  Unsubscribe immediately.  If you won’t, I’ll have Feedburner pull your plug right now.

Ok, so now that the least ambitious of us have been forcibly removed, let’s get down to brass tax.  Millionaires are soooo 1980’s.  It’s been done.  In fact, being a millionaire is so played out that they’re having to do a sequel of the movie Wall Street.  When the big SEO’s have as much cash as the leading capitalist villain, Hollywood has to do a rewrite.

I know a few people that have a billion bucks in the bank.  One day I would like to stop feeling like Johnny Carson’s wife in their presence and create something meaningful enough to join that club.  As the smartest economist of our time, Chris Rock, once said…”Shaq is rich.  The guy that signs his check is wealthy.”  That’s right, I get all my financial perspective from YouTube videos.

I have thought about this quite a bit and, as far as I can tell, the four quickest ways to massive wealth in this day and age are (in order of ease):

1.  Have billionaire parents.  My parents have failed me miserably here and it will be mentioned again over Father’s Day dinner.
2.  Marry rich.  I can’t tell if my subscriber count would go to zero or a million if I actually expanded on this.  So I better not.
3.  Generate a large Internet audience.  Hey, that’s what we do.
4.  Find oil. 

That’s right, folks.  If a little leprechaun jumped out of a taxi (’cause that’s how leprechauns roll) and handed you two slips of paper…one a map to an undiscovered oil field and the other the business plan that would generate a massive Internet audience…if you chose the oil field, it would take you a lot longer to extract similar wealth. 

Just roll that around in your mouth for a minute.  This is the power of what we all do.  The unique visitor is the most valuable commodity in Internet deal flow and we are the best at creating the highest quality, massive audience of that commodity.

When I decided to shelve what was a really strong SEO Consulting business and start living the VC-backed startup lifestyle, it was the first move in my plan to be the first SEO Billionaire.  It’s a lofty goal and, statistically, I am twice as likely to be hit by lightning on the dunk that puts me past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the NBA’s All-Time Scoring Leaders list…but, screw it, I’m going all-in.  It might be a pipe dream for me, but one of us will do it.

The paths to that pot of gold may vary, but here is what I have learned so far:

1.  Stop dicking around making your clients rich, grinding out lagging projects, and head to Silicon Valley.  It is highly likely the folks responsible for cutting you your billion dollar check are living and working in the Valley.  Insert yourself into that ecosystem ASAP.

2.  You are not an SEO anymore.  You are [Insert Title Here] of Audience Development (or Traffic Acquisition)

3.  You don’t rank sites anymore.  You build large, targeted media assets and audiences. 

4.  You are not spamming, you are solving a problem.  Ok, you’re still spamming, but you’re also helping print audiences come online or otherwise performing work that the East Coast Ivory Tower Media Companies still suck at. 

5.  You care as much about building an email list as you do about a Digg homepage or a .gov link injection.  You need to become the complete player.  Your SEO expertise is just one weapon in your arsenal, but an SEO has to constantly acquire traffic.  You want to build a sticky experience, a recurring audience, and you want to bring your cost of traffic acquisition as close to zero as possible.  Intelligent drip marketing is waaaaaaaay easier than waiting for your links to be vested in Google’s algo.

6.  You introduce yourself to Jeremy Liew.  Nobody gets Internet Media as well as he does and, in my opinion, he will emerge out of this era as the Mike Moritz of Internet Media.  Luckily for me, Jeremy sits on our Board.

7.  You realize that you might already be rich, but if you want to be wealthy, you need to go play sidecar monkey to a savvy Silicon Valley CEO on your first business.  I have no problem building a big audience or making a lot of money, but getting to mooch operational knowledge off of Scott Albro everyday will help ensure I don’t blow “my chance” at leading a business to the big liquidity event. 

PS.  Scott was a client of mine at Scoreboard prior to our current project so, again, I cannot stress it any more strongly how important it is to choose your clients well while you are still in your Consulting Stage. 

8.  You find yourself a VC with exceptional financing and Board skills.  For me, that’s Tim McAdam of Trinity Ventures.  A great product in a big market is one thing, but you’ll need a lot of help along the way in structuring the best investment rounds, managing the capital, and ultimately managing your exit strategy.  It’s almost unfair that we have Jeremy’s media leadership and Tim’s wisdom. 

[Note] I don’t need the guys in 6, 7, and 8 to make a lot of money.  But I’ll make a lot more having been groomed by them.  If I need to lose a million bucks in interim opportunity costs while learning how to make quite a bit more, I’m happy to do it.  There’s a certain amount of luck in becoming a billionaire and “luck = opportunity + preparation“.  I left the SEO world loaded with opportunities, but lacking in the preparation to take the next step in wealth generation.

9.  If somebody wants to fund you to build a large Web 2.0 social community, you better execute quickly.  Social media audiences are only good for two things:  they grow virally and CPM ad products.  At some point the CPM rates will implode and then you’re stuck with millions of users who don’t do shit for you.  There are smarter ad products and monetization strategies (like lead gen and CPA) that are more suited to the types of audiences we are best able to build.  And they will be much more valuable in a recessed Internet Advertising Economy.

If the rest of this post sounds too ambitious to you, #8 is something that each of us should consider actionable immediately and it is still the smartest path to the Millionaire Lifestyle.

10.  The East Coast Old Media Empire is slowly realizing that they are able to generate Internet media audiences about as well as old people f**k.  The good news is that they are loaded with cash and completely willing to get into bidding wars with each other to buy your audience.  The lesson here is to build something that can integrate easily with their business models or you may lose out on the bidding war factor. 

11.  100x multiples.  Say that out loud. “100 times, bitches!”  Oops.  I got a little carried away there.  But, it’s a hundred freaking X!  Even the crappiest of crappy lead gen media companies are selling for 10-30x right now.  On the high side, YouTube went for 100x revenue and Aquantive went for 100x earnings.  This is like somebody buying a little girl’s lemonade stand for $50,000.  The YouTube deal was like buying that lemonade stand for 5 stacks knowing full well you are going to get sued for 2.  Land grabs are completely irrational, so play into it. 

12.  Jason Calacanis, for all the beatings he takes, is living testament to “The Plan”.  Dude got $20+ million of investment at an alleged $100 million pre-money valuation for Mahalo, the least defensible, most unnecessary media property that I could have ever imagined.  Deal flow and investment rounds are largely based on recent history.  Thanks, JC!  The rising of the tide truly raises all boats. 

If Calacanis doesn’t resonate strong enough for you, look at Mark Cuban.  He sold Yahoo a piece of shit (Broadcast.com) for $5.6 billion and now he gets to toy around with an NBA franchise (badly, I might add).  Conservatively speaking, 50% of my audience could build better enterprises than Mahalo or Broadcast.com and solve large market problems, but they’re probably too afraid to try.  Jump in the pool!  It’s not as deep as you think.

So, there you have it.  There’s probably another hundred points to add to this and I guess that’s why I sit down a couple times a week to crank out entries.  Andy has his version of “The Dream” and this is mine.  Maybe I get there.  Maybe I don’t.  But remember, at least one of us will.

Stay tuned…